Sackler Gallery 1050 Independence Avenue Washington États-Unis
Video and Photo Installations Explore Themes of Modern Culture and Memory The first major U.S. exhibition of internationally renowned contemporary artist Fiona Tan will be on view at the Sackler Gallery Sept. 25 – Jan. 16, 2011. "Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall" includes video installations and photographs exploring the individual's place in a world increasingly shaped by global culture. By integrating archival film footage and photographs, original location shooting and the spoken word, her works question the relationship among images, narrative and memory. The works on view invite reflection on the role of the recorded image in the experience of time and the construction of individual identity.
"The exhibition is largely autobiographical," said Carol Huh, curator of contemporary art and organizer of the exhibition at the Freer and Sackler galleries. "Through Tan's works, we gain a sense of her own personal journey through the world." Tan's most recent video installation, Rise and Fall (2009), specially commissioned for this exhibition and filmed in Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, focuses on an older and younger woman. Filmed in striking locales, Tan emphasizes the intimacy of place, the simplicity of daily acts and the mutability of time to evoke the interwoven lives of these two women—scenes in gardens, caresses between lovers, the acts of sleeping, reading and dressing. The viewer wonders if the women are, in fact, the same, as if each embodies the dreams of the other.
Other video works on display include Provenance (2008) and A Lapse of Memory (2007), which draw on the traditions of 17th-century Dutch and 19th-century British architecture to explore western notions of Asia. The photo installation, The Changeling (2006), compiles more than 300 archival photos of Japanese schoolgirls in an examination of how personal narratives shift over a lifetime.
"In her beautiful and evocative way, Tan conveys the flux of life," said Huh. "We are always surrounded by images, and those images become the basis for our constantly shifting memories and the ways in which we represent ourselves."